Watching the news last night, the anchor explained Texas Democrats left the state to avoid a quorum. The “Translating Politics Into English” bells started ringing in my head: No one knows what a quorum is, except the small percentage working in this world, and high schoolers currently enrolled in a government class. There’s really no reason anyone else should retain this information, and the news outlets didn’t translate, so I will. Sidenote: Texas is not the first legislative walkout.
As much as I dislike admitting it, It all comes back to math:
150: Members in the Texas House of Representatives
100: 2/3rds of 150, the number required to be present to hold a vote (a quorum)
76: Votes needed to pass a bill
83: Republicans
67: Democrats
Republicans (83 members) can pass a bill (76 votes) without Democrat help. However, in order to hold the vote (100 members), they need 17 Democrats to be present to allow a vote to be held.
- When the bill came up in May, there was a midnight deadline to vote and Democrats left the building just before 11 pm, running out the clock, leaving the bill dead for the session.
- The Texas legislature only meets in odd years, so Governor Abbott called a Special Session to force action on the bill.
- Governors can compel legislators to return to the Capitol with a “Call of the House” when members are locked inside and the Highway Patrol is assigned to track down legislators and return them to the Capitol.*
- However, the Governor and Highway Patrol’s authority extends only to the state’s borders, thus why the members left the state.
- Why DC? Why this bill? This requires a separate translation. Stay tuned…
*This tactic is not uncommon and can be used to:
- Give leadership/governor/voters time to convince legislators in the chamber to change their votes,
- Stall while a member returns from another location, or is running late,
- Distract attention from a member who wants to come in at the last minute and make a controversial vote which passes or fails the bill.
The latter answers the former.
- Latter: Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 3 would eliminate a number of ways Texans vote: drive-thru, 24-hour polling places, ballot drop boxes, and even Sunday morning voting, in addition to making it easier to overturn election results.
- The bills also prohibit election offices from sending ballot applications to voters (like many counties did during COVID).
- Former: The members are pleading with Congress to pass federal voting reform with hopes of blocking these proposed changes to Texas law.